Читать книгу The Female of the Species - Lionel Shriver - Страница 9

Hassatti’s mother also called Gray ’l-oo-lubo, taking her into the family like a stray from the plains—isolated from the herd, difficult, but a fine specimen, and tamable.

The boy from the Land of Corgie, Osinga, was as terrified of Gray as Hassatti had predicted, but bent on his brothers’ revenge; after repeated reassurances, Osinga agreed to guide her to Toroto. Hiking out, however, he insisted on walking behind her, which made it awkward for Gray to follow him.

Errol could easily imagine Gray on this trip. Many was the time he himself had hiked behind her while a voice screamed in his head, “Go ahead, Gray, say, ‘I am tired.’ Say, ‘My muscles are killing me, Errol.’” But Gray would keep going silently in front of him, until finally Errol would growl in irascible defeat about needing a break, and Gray would answer smoothly, never out of breath, “Oh, would you like to stop, Errol? Of course. Maybe I’ll do a few push-ups while you’re resting …”

She was too goddamned much.

Toward dusk, Osinga speared mongooses and brought them to Gray like sacramental offerings. She skinned and gutted them quickly and without queasiness, for Gray enjoyed butchery. Errol had watched her take animals apart before. She liked to study the muscles glistening underneath the skin of a fresh kill, and move the joints in their sockets to see how they worked. She never called small prey “cute,” and when the glazed eyes of a mongoose in her hands rolled up, her face never softened.

Nights Gray slept fitfully, dreaming of Corgie. The dreams flipped from terror to pleasure and back again. Corgie would reach for her in her sleep, and she wouldn’t know if he meant to caress or strangle her until the moment his fingers wrapped around her neck.

The bush got thicker and more hazardous as they advanced. Through thorn trees Osinga stared at Gray’s hands, surprised that they bled. Yet she didn’t cry out or complain when the thorns stuck far into her flesh, so he assumed she felt no pain. All her life people had made this mistake with Gray.

When she stepped on a trail of fire ants and they swept up her legs, Osinga stood back and watched as she rapidly picked the insects off. At last she stamped angrily and shouted for him to help her, and he was surprised that these small animals could hurt such a thing. She seemed impregnable; she seemed that way to everyone.

There came a moment when Osinga looked up at a particular mountain and went wild-eyed. He wouldn’t go any farther; he’d only point. Gray walked the last length alone.

Once she’d climbed to the top ridge, Gray looked down into a deep valley with cliffs shooting steeply up on all sides and waterfalls sweeping down in white rushes. Finding only trees below, she worried whether this was the right place. Yet as she inched down the steep cliff toward the valley, grabbing scraggly trees and sometimes crawling on all fours, Gray could gradually discern one odd structure jutting from the foliage below, a strange, towerlike thing in blond wood. When she was nearly down, manyatta after manyatta also appeared among the trees. Aside from these traditionally constructed mud-and-dung compounds, Gray could now see three other blond-wooded buildings, large and angular and queer even by Western standards.

The rest of her way to the village Gray walked slowly, with her head high, nose to the wind. Gone was the smell of curling pages. Smoke drifted from the huts, and colors flushed beside her. Gray Kaiser was alive and in Africa and something was happening at last. When she glided past the mud-packed walls, children fled before her; men and women swept into their compounds and posts cracked against the gates inside.

As Gray drew into view of the blond tower, natives stopped carrying wood, froze mid-circle as they lashed joints on the tower with vine, left off mid-sentence as they called in their gnarled Masai. In the stillness, one figure kept jabbing angrily from the ground at a man on the third story. He was the last to turn to her, following the line of the native’s gaze as he might have tracked a fuse to dynamite.

“What doesn’t belong in this picture?”

“I don’t,” said Gray. “You don’t, either.”

“You don’t feel a little the lost sheep?” he asked. “Astray.”

It was a big comedown from antelope to sheep. “On the contrary,” said Gray, “I’ve found my way quite nicely. I have arrived.”

“I was unaware we’d become a tourist attraction.”

“Oh yes,” said Gray. “I’m here to help you set up a hot-dog concession. I thought you’d want to get in on the ground floor.”

The man smiled a little, perhaps in spite of himself. Gray took the moment to assess him more closely. Errol had seen several brownish photographs of Charles Corgie. He always wore a wide hat with a sloppy brim. His coloring was dark, his bearing sultry. His eyes flickered as if long ago someone had done something terrible to him for which he had planned a perfect revenge; when it came due he would laugh without sympathy or regret. In a few of these snapshots he was smiling, like now, though always with both humor and disdain, as if the two of you could have a high old time if he would only let you in on the joke. Of course, he was not about to.

Casually, Corgie pointed his rifle at Gray. Through their interchange he played with the gun distractedly, as people will toy with an object on a coffee table in a conversation that is sometimes awkward.

Gray nodded at his tattered khaki. “So you deserted.”

“I got lost.”

“And you still haven’t found your way home? You must not have tried very hard.”

“I tried clicking my heels together three times,” he said congenially. “It didn’t work.” Corgie turned and said something in Il-Ororen to one of the natives. The man shrank back and shook his head. Corgie repeated himself in a steelier tone; it was a voice that made all present, even Gray, take a breath. The native approached Gray and frisked her sides with a gingerly touch. “Raise your hands over your head, would you?”

Gray did not. “I’m unarmed.”

“If that’s true, then you’re very foolish. But it’s not necessarily true. White people aren’t to be trusted.”

“I’ve found that people’s generalizations are largely illuminating about themselves.”

“So what kind of generalizations do you make?”

“I’m more inclined to see people as judicious and reasonable. Unless presented with evidence to the contrary.” She raised her eyebrows at Corgie. “Which I sometimes am.”

“Some woman who can see the human race as judicious and reasonable in light of World War II.”

“What concerns me about World War II is that barbarity on such a scale seems to make smaller, everyday barbarity petty and unimportant. Actually, it’s just as important. It’s the same thing.”

“You wouldn’t be making any accusations, would you? Being our guest?”

“Oh no,” said Gray mildly. “We’re just being philosophical, aren’t we, Mr. Corgie?”

“Lieutenant. But I’m sure I would have remembered meeting such a lovely woman. I could swear we haven’t been introduced.”

“Funny. I feel as if I know you incredibly well.”

“Pretty and telepathic, too! Do you have any other special powers? They could come in useful here.”

“Certainly. I can receive disembodied transmissions, produce mirages, steal voices. All that old stuff. I’m sure you’ve covered it. But I did bring one thing you could probably use.”

“Decent tobacco.”

“Moral sensibility.”

“You remind me of aunts at Christmas who gave me socks.”

Gray nodded at his threadbare clothing. “It looks as if you could use those, too.”

Suddenly Corgie said with a smile, “Osinga!”

“Lieutenant, you of all people should have enough respect for magic not to spoil the trick.”

“I respect tricks on other people. My tricks.”

“Well, your tricks made quite an impression on the boy. He thinks quite a lot of you.”

“I bet he does. I made a bigger impression on his brothers.”

“About an inch wide and several inches deep. A cheap way to impress people.”

“It works.”

“It’s not very elegant.”

“You have far too many opinions.”

Gray stopped and looked at him. “Yes.” That’s all she said. It was an awkward moment. It is always awkward when people have nothing else to add or refute; when they agree.

“What the hell are you doing here?” asked Corgie abruptly.

“I’m an anthropologist. I came to study these people.”

“By yourself?”

Gray looked at the mouth of Corgie’s gun. It would be wise to create troops in the rear. “Yes,” said Gray defiantly.

“And who knows you’re here?”

“A few Masai.”

Corgie smiled. “You didn’t have to admit that. Though even alone you do present something of a problem.”

“How?”

“They think I’m the Ghost of Christmas Past or something. Jesus. Gary Cooper. One of a kind, anyway. Like Zeus. Now we are two.”

“Even godheads come in two sexes. You’re not up on your mythology.”

“But of course Little Miss Anthropologist is. It is Miss?”

It would be wise to be Mrs. Anthropologist. “Yes, Miss,” said Gray.

They glared in silence.

“Well, what are you going to do with me?” asked Gray.

Corgie stroked the stubble on his chin. “Charlie has to think about it.”

“Charlie had better,” said Gray. “If you shoot me they might figure out that thing would work on you. Rather blows the immortality business all to pieces.”

Corgie’s eyes sharpened.

“And if you keep me prisoner,” she went on reasonably, “they might decide you couldn’t walk through walls yourself. You see,” she explained cheerfully, “I could be of some use to you. In anthropology I’ve learned a few things, Lieutenant. For instance, that human savvy runs across cultures. If my hallowed white flesh will bleed, won’t yours?”

Corgie looked at her steadily. “You get yourself into a fix, you think you can just weasel your way out of it, don’t you?”

“Charles. Wouldn’t you do the same thing?”

“I did. Already.”

“By deserting your brigade?”

Corgie worked his jaw back and forth. “Miss—?”

“Kaiser.”

“Miss Kaiser. I left one war and walked right into another. In this one I’m president to private, the whole shebang. I’ve maintained my borders for five years now. I think that makes me quite the little soldier, with no R&R. ‘On the seventh day he rested’ is crap. Gods don’t get a day off, ever.”

“It must be exhausting, creating animals, deciding on the weather. Doling out floods and locusts—”

“It is exhausting. You’ll see.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be a deity. Maybe I’m happier as an anthropologist.”

“You’ll be a god, all right. I may not be able to use this rifle on you, but I gave earlier exhibitions. My parishioners remember them. If they get the idea that Charlie has been, ah, misrepresenting his authority, then Charlie and even his cute little girlfriend might not stay too healthy. Are you getting the picture?”

Gray nodded. “Mutual ransom.”

Corgie toured her around his buildings, explaining that he’d been an architect before the war. Each was blond, precise, and remarkable. In his cabin he showed her their scale models made from chips of wood and strips of bark. A child would have loved them, with the bits of furniture and rope swings and knitted hammocks. Dark figures in black clay strode across the plans, though in each scene there was one figure of a siltier soil, a paler concoction; it stood taller and straighter than the rest, and wore a hat.

In the first of these models, of this cabin, the figure in white mud was isolated from the black ones, but there were tiny manyattas on either side with whole families having meals and couples trysting in corners. In the second, though—of Corgie’s gymnasium—there were fewer natives, and some of these were smashed or dismembered. There were no families or couples. The blacks still standing walked starkly and singly across the ground like Giacometti bronzes. In the third model, of Corgie’s “cathedral,” there were no more dark figures at all, only the white one; his clay was of a dimmer cast and had no head and face, only a hat. The architecture in this model was more beautiful and refined than ever, but the little white man in the middle of it looked squat; his limbs had shortened, his pose caved in. In the fourth and final model, of the tower, there were no figures at all, not even a white one. There was only a building. The progression of the projects themselves had gone from the lyrical or even quaint—a quality this cabin retained, with its small details and attention to comfort—to harsher angles and harder edges, until this last project was jagged to the point of cruelty and inventive to the point of desperation.

Returning to the unfortunate black clay splayed in the dirt of the gymnasium, Gray asked, “Do you consider yourself at all—disturbed?”

“No,” said Corgie, not seeming to take offense. “Mostly bored. That was a bad time,” he admitted, gesturing to the gym. “They didn’t understand what I was doing. The equipment. The courts. Sports aren’t big here. I think they found it intriguing in a useless, mystical sort of way, but the crops were bad that year, which was hard on the old religion. I kept telling them they didn’t get rain because they weren’t cooperating.”

“You sound as if you believe that yourself.”

“Maybe I do.” Corgie shot her a quick, mysterious smile. “Anyway, I’d come back here at night after haggling with shoddy labor all day, and I’d smash one of those little clay men with my thumb: squash. Sometimes I’d do that instead of shooting one of them. I thought it was nicer. Don’t you approve?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

Charles smiled and added wryly, “Of course, it’s just shy of voodoo. I’ve been here too long.” He looked fondly down at the scene, wiping some dust off the gymnasium roof. “I always liked miniatures, even as a kid. I liked balsa airplanes and Erector sets. I had a terrific model train, with lights inside the caboose—”

“I bet you spent whole afternoons wrecking it to pieces.”

“How did you guess? And I liked to put little signalmen on the tracks and run them over.”

“I suppose the nice thing about miniatures is that they make you feel so big.”

Charles turned to Gray and looked at her hard. “Have you always been like this?”

“Like what?”

“Running a fellow down all the time. Why don’t you give a guy a break?”

“It doesn’t seem to me that you need a break.”

“Why the hell not? Who the hell doesn’t?”

“Any man with a thousand loyal fans outside his door.”

Charles waved his hand in dismissal. “Yeah. A thousand of my closest friends.” He tapped the arm of his chair and stared at his models. “You know, I’ll tell you,” he began. “The funny thing is—” He stopped. He closed his mouth abruptly.

“What.”

Charles sat.

“What is the funny thing?”

Charles licked his lips, and went on reluctantly. “When that feeling … the way you feel around these models. The little houses. The little people. The way you look down on them. Put them places. When—”

“What?”

“When you walk outside to the regular-size place? And it’s no different. That’s what funny. When you’re around life-size shit and it all still feels like—toys.” Charles couldn’t look Gray in the eye. “Animals seem stuffed. People seem like dolls. My own house looks like the station in my train set. With spikes around it. Like Popsicle sticks.” Charles cleared his throat and raised his eyebrows, looking up at Gray with an indefinite smile, as if maybe he was pulling her leg. He laughed an unsettling little laugh. “You are here, aren’t you? Say something.”

“Something,” said Gray dully.

“An old kid’s joke. Not very helpful. You’re supposed to say something that makes me feel normal-sized. In the big village. With the actual people.”

“Isn’t that the trouble? That you’re not sure they’re actual people?”

Charles stood up. “I don’t know what the hell we’re talking about.” Charles rang a homemade bell; its clacker scrabbled in the tin. A native appeared below, by the stilts of the cabin. Charles ordered dinner—with one more look at Gray to make sure she was still there—for two.

At the end of the meal, roasted game with mangoes and banana, Charles rang his dented tin bell and the native climbed up to his doorway to take the plates away. Once the servant had climbed back down, Charles pulled the ladder up and set it against the outside wall. Charles invited Gray to his veranda, which looked out on the cliffs. He lit an oil lantern on the porch. Gray climbed into a hammock and stared up; the stars were brighter and more numerous than she’d ever seen. She felt peculiarly content. When she glanced down, Gray noticed that the sides of the porch were covered with long, sharpened wooden spikes. Charles explained, “They help me sleep nights.”

Corgie himself leaned back in a broad cane armchair, and they both sipped honey wine. Smoke rose from the manyattas on either side, and the lantern, which burned animal fat, gave off a meaty smell, like a barbecue. The hoot of night birds echoed between the cliffs. Gray relaxed into the netting of her hammock; it creaked gently when she moved. The wine was sweet and potent. The flame flickered beside Charles Corgie and lit his profile as he stared off into the black bush. He breathed deeply and held the wine in his mouth a long time before swallowing. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

“What’s your name?” he asked at last. “Your first name.”

“Gray.”

“Soft, for you.”

“It strikes most people as dour.”

“No, soft. Gentle.”

“That’s surprising?”

Charles reached over and rapped against her outstretched leg with his knuckles. “Hear that? Bong, bong, bong. That’s what it’s like when you knock against the side of a tank.” He went back to staring out into the forest. Gray stared, too. The foliage pulsed as her eyes fought to focus, to pick up any object however slight. The trees bloomed on the edges in explosions of black. There’s nothing like African darkness. It eats your eyes.

“Are you insulting me?” asked Gray.

“I’m not sure.”

Gray decided to change the subject. “I can’t believe you haven’t asked me about the war. Don’t you care what happened?”

“Kaiser—I left.”

“It’s over.”

“You don’t say. Who won?”

“I don’t know if you’ll be disappointed or not. Whose side were you on?”

Charles considered, leaning farther back in his chair and setting his boots up on the railing. “Adolf isn’t my style. I don’t like the way he moves, know what I mean? The guy’s too excitable.”

“And maybe you didn’t like like the way his uniform was tailored.”

“Actually,” said Charles, looking over at her with his black eyes gleaming quietly under the looming ridge of his brow, “the tie—with the shirt buttoned all the way up to the neck—I prefer a dictator with an open collar.”

“Clearly,” said Gray. Charles’s own shirt was unbuttoned to the middle of his chest, where the hair was thick and black like his eyes, and gleamed just as defiantly in the lantern light, with drops of honey wine.

“You did use the past tense,” Charles observed.

“Adolf isn’t that excitable anymore.”

“And Benito? Hirohito?” Gray shook her head. Charles shrugged. “Just as well. Me, I’m a Napoleon man.”

“Why’s that?”

“Those losers wouldn’t know what to do with a joint once they’d got hold of it. Bonaparte had plans. I liked his projects. But that slouch Speer built some nasty, hulking places. What a no-talent. Everything he put together looked like a goddamned morgue.”

Charles pulled out a packet and rolled himself a cigarette in a leaf, quickly and expertly into a long, tight spleef. “Tobacco ran out first week,” he explained. “But I found a weed—sweet, but with an edge to it. Wasn’t common, though, so I’ve got the flock growing some over there. Doing pretty well, too. They dry it and crush it and wrap it up in packets. I miss my tins of Prince Albert, but what can you do?” Charles lit up with the lamp, then exhaled in a long, slow whistle. “The laymen aren’t supposed to smoke any, but they do. I’ll let them get away with it, as long as it doesn’t get out of hand. Catch one occasionally and make an example. See, they think this stuff gives them knowledge. Actually, it doesn’t even get you doped up.” Charles took another hit. “Besides,” he said with a smile, “it suits me if they keep looking for knowing with smoke.”

“So you have them growing weeds instead of crops they could eat.”

Charles rolled his eyes. “Let’s not talk about agriculture. I like you better as the voice of the free world than as an anthropologist. So,” said Charles, leaning back with an imperial air, “did Franklin D. string our boy Adolf from the top of the Washington Monument?”

“Roosevelt is dead. Hitler killed himself. —This is like Reader’s Digest Condensed World Wars,” said Gray with frustration.

“Go on.”

Gray decided to save the atomic bomb for later.

Then she realized she could leave it out altogether if she felt like it. She could even have told Charles that Hitler now ruled Eurasia, the United States, and South America, and then this would be the truth in Toroto. It was a curious little moment of power.

“A number of Nazis are on trial right now in Nuremberg for war crimes,” she continued, thinking it was a little late in the day for inventing a whole new ending to an awfully big story.

“On trial?”

“Why not?”

“Seems pretty feeble is all. Why not shoot the guys and be done with it?”

“Out of respect for legal process. To reinstitute order.”

“Come on. Laws are just to give you an excuse for shooting somebody when you were going to shoot them anyway.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Gray.

“Nope. I know about laws. I make them.”

“Is there anything you don’t know about?”

“Not that I know about.” He added, “Except. I don’t know about you.”

Whenever he turned the conversation to her, Gray got inexplicably nervous. They sat in silence again.

“Hitler—” she ventured.

“Hmm?”

“He killed six million Jews.”

Charles looked up. “No shit,” he said noncommittally.

“Not in battles. In factories.”

“Huh,” said Charles.

Gray watched his face. “What do you think of that project?”

“Well,” said Charles, snuffing out his cigarette on the arm of his chair. “Seems like a real—waste of time, anyway.” He shot Gray a shrug.

Gray looked back at him in stony silence until she couldn’t take it anymore and started to laugh.

“I missed the joke,” said Charles.

“You are the joke! You’ve been trying to impress me, haven’t you?”

“How’s that?”

“You think if you’re blasé about six million Jews that’s going to impress me.”

“You figure that’s what Adolf was trying to do?” he said gruffly, looking away. “Impress little Eva?”

“Seriously, Charles, you want me to admire that, don’t you? I mean, that’s twisted, even horrid, but it’s sweet, too. Quaint.” Gray kept chuckling in her hammock. Charles rose brusquely from his chair. Errol knew these moments—Gray could be nasty in a light, lovely way, and she could turn a situation on a dime. Surprise, Charles Corgie.

“I’m going to bed,” he said coldly. “So are you.” He towered over her hammock, giving her a moment of nervousness Gray for once richly deserved. She stopped laughing.

“Where?”

“In my house.”

“Maybe I’ll stay outside.”

“No, you won’t. You’re a god now, Miss Kaiser, and you’ll sleep in Olympus with the rest of us.”

Gray got up cautiously from her hammock. “I’m sorry, I—”

“On the floor,” he assured her. “Believe me, it will give me far more pleasure to have you up half the night beady-eyed with worry than to do what you will worry about.” With that he blew out the lamp perfunctorily and strode inside, throwing her a hard, leathery skin for a blanket. “Good night, dear,” said Charles, crawling inside his own soft bed stuffed with feathers and pulling the warm, woolly skin over his head.

As it happened, Gray was up half the night. While Charles Corgie’s thrashing and mumbling on the bed did keep her on edge, Gray’s real problem was far more prosaic: she did not know what gods did with honey wine once they were through with it.

When Gray told this story it was very funny. She could get tablefuls of international guests rolling on the floor. On the floor of that stilted African cabin, however, Errol imagined she had not been so amused. She couldn’t sleep. The ladder was pulled up from the ground and she didn’t know how to replace it, nor whether there were too many natives about for such a mortal safari. And the situation was not, of course, improving. She’d enjoyed the wine and had drunk her share; Gray’s abdomen gradually billowed higher, until—a magic moment in Gray Kaiser’s life—she cared nothing for power and reserve; her fantasies slipped from huge tribal celebrations in her honor and lines of obsequious good-looking men at her feet to ordinary indoor plumbing. Love, humor, and courage fell away. Money and fame, art and human history fell away. World War II and six million Jews fell away. Even, at last, remaining aloof with Lieutenant Charles Corgie fell away, and Gray found herself numbly climbing up off the floor and standing by his bedside at four in the morning.

“Charles—” she said softly. “Lieutenant—”

He only grunted and turned away. She put a hand on his shoulder. Charles sprang upright and in a single motion had a rifle pointed a few inches from Gray’s chest. His eyes were completely open and alert.

“Don’t shoot!” Corgie’s rifle had very nearly taken care of Gray’s problem abruptly.

Charles did not put down the gun. He said something in garbled Masai that Gray didn’t understand.

“Please,” she said in a small voice. “I need your help.”

Slowly he lowered the gun as he recognized her by the moonlight coming through the window. “If you were thinking you could get this gun—”

“No!”

Charles looked at her more closely. “Come here.” He reached up and touched her cheek, then inspected his fingers. “No shit. You’re crying.”

Gray looked down. Tears fell on the bed frame.

Charles put the rifle aside and pulled her over to sit beside him. Her sharp shoulders were drawn to her head; she looked narrow. Charles put his hand on her cheek, turning her head to face him. “Having nightmares about terrible Charlie Corgie, who doesn’t care about six million Jews?”

Gray shook her head and looked away again.

“You miss Mommy and Daddy?”

“Don’t make fun of me,” said Gray, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

Charles pulled the hair from her eyes strand by strand and tucked it behind her ear. “What’s the trouble?”

“It’s stupid.”

Charles waited patiently.

“All this god business,” she went on. “You didn’t tell me what to do—” She stamped her foot and looked at the ceiling. “I’m not usually shy! Charles, I need the bathroom! I have for hours!”

It must have been hard not to laugh, but according to Gray he didn’t; he barely smiled. Charles cocked his head. His eyes were as warm and soft as they were going to get in the hard cool light of the moon. “That isn’t stupid, Miss Anthropologist. You’re new to your field or you’d know better. For a god, taking a leak is a serious business. You have to be careful. Quiet.” He led Gray to a corner, where she slid down a pole to the foliage below. When she returned Charles lifted her back up. He wasn’t a massive man but could pull her whole weight with obvious ease. When she was up, Charles kept hold of her hand a moment, then with a funny annoyance let go and told her to get back to sleep. As she was settling back down on the slats this time, again with irritation, he tossed her his feather pillow before turning his back on her with a grunt and wrapping his arms fondly around the muzzle of his gun.